We would like to invite you to a lecture by John-Michael Warner, focusing on photography- and film-based art in the context of contemporary borders and memory politics.

In his talk, Lens-Based Art at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century: Mary Jenea Sanchez, David Taylor, Mark Klett, and the Vanishing Present, professor Warner will explore Gayatri Spivak’s theory of the “vanishing present” in relation to landscape photography documenting the US-Mexico borderlands. He will discuss the works of Mark Klett (Palm at the Site of Japanese American Internment Camp) and David Taylor (Working the Line), while the lecture will be preceded by a short introduction by Professor Justyna Wierzchowska and screening of Mary Jenea Sanchez’s film, Historias en la Camioneta. Selected works will be analyzed in the context of migration, history, and the fading traces of the past.

John-Michael Warner is an art historian, Associate Professor of Art History in the School of Art at Kent State University. He earned his BA in History and Art History from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, an MA in Art History from Arizona State University, and a PhD in Art History with a graduate minor in Gender & Women’s Studies from the University of Arizona. His research focuses on contemporary art, photography, feminist and queer theory, and environmental art history. In 2018, he co-edited the book Border Spaces: The U.S.-Mexico Frontera with Katherine G. Morrissey, published by the University of Arizona Press. This publication examines the artistic and natural histories of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands from the early 20th century to the present. His research interests include border studies, land use analysis, ecocriticism, modern sculpture theory, social and relational art, and theoretical considerations of audiences.

Event created in collaboration with the English Studies – Linguistics, University of Warsaw